July 2014

Black metal is typically linked, since its inception, to Satanic or anti-Christian themes. With the proliferation of bands in the 90s (after the Norwegian boom) and subsequent emergence of sub-genres, other topics such as paganism, metaphysics, depression and even nationalism came to the fore.

In order to discover the terminology used to explore these lyrical themes, I’ve devised a couple of term extraction experiments using the black metal data set. The goal here is to build a black metal vocabulary by discovering salient words and expressions, that is terms that when used in BM lyrics carry more information than when used in a “normal” setting. For instance, the terms “Nazarene” or “Wotan” have a much higher weight in the black metal domain than in the general purpose corpus used for comparison. Once again note that this does not necessarily mean that these two words occur very frequently in BM lyrics (I’d bet that “Satan” or “death” have a higher number of occurrences), but it indicates that, when they do, they carry more information within the BM context.

This task was carried through JATE‘s implementations of the GlossEx and C-value algorithms. The part-of-speech of each term (that is, the “type” of term) was discovered with the StanfordNLP toolkit. The top 50 of each type (with the exception of adverbs) are listed in the table below. For the sake of visualization, I make a distinction between named entities/locations and the other nouns, being that the former are depicted in the word maps at the end of this post.

I’ve also included, in the last column of the table, the top term combinations. It’s noteworthy how much of these combinations are either negations of something (“no hope”, “no god”, “no life” and so on), or concerned with time (“eternal darkness”, “ancient times”). Such preoccupation with large extensions of “time” is also evident in the top adverbs (“eternally”, “forever”, “evermore”), adjectives (“endless”, “eternal”) and even nouns (“aeon” or “eon”).

ADJECTIVES

ADVERBS

VERBS

NOUNS

TERM COMBINATIONS

Endless

Nevermore

Desecrate

Forefather

Life and death

Unhallowed

Eternally

Smolder

Armor

Human race

Luciferian

Tomorrow

Travel

Aeon

No light

Infernal

Infernally

Fuel

Splendor

No hope

Necromantic

Forever

Spiral

Pentagram

Eternal night

Paralyzed

Anymore

Dethrone

Perdition

No god

Pestilent

Mighty

Throne

Specter

Full moon

Unholy

Skyward

Envenom

Misanthrope

No life

Illusive

Evermore

Lay

Cross

Black metal

Untrodden

Earthward

Resound

Magick

Cold wind

Astral

Someday

Mesmerize

Nihil

No place

Misanthropic

Astray

Abominate

Ragnarok

No escape

Unmerciful

Onward

Paralyze

Blasphemer

No return

Cruelest

Verily

Blaspheme

Profanation

Eternal life

Blackest

Deathly

Impale

Misanthropy

No fear

Eternal

Forth

Cremate

Malediction

Flesh and blood

Wintry

Unceasingly

Bleed

Revenant

No matter

Bestial

Weightlessly

Procreate

Damnation

Fallen angel

Reborn

Anew

Enslave

Conjuration

Eternal darkness

Putrid

Demonically

Awake

Undead

No man

Darkest

Behold

Nothingness

Dark night

Unblessed

Intoxicate

Armageddon

Lost soul

Colorless

Devour

Lacerate

No end

Diabolic

Bury

Wormhole

Ancient time

Demonic

Demonize

Eon

No remorse

Wrathful

Forsake

Devourer

No reason

Nebular

Enshroud

Impaler

No longer

Vampiric

Writhe

Sulfur

Black cloud

Unchained

Destroy

Betrayer

Dark forest

Armored

Entomb

Deceiver

Human flesh

Immortal

Raze

Bloodlust

Endless night

Hellish

Flagellate

Reaper

Ancient god

Hellbound

Unleash

Horde

Mother earth

Unnamable

Convoke

Blasphemy

Black wing

Prideful

Crucify

Eternity

Night sky

Colorful

Fornicate

Defiler

Dark side

Unbaptized

Torment

Immolation

Eternal sleep

Unforgotten

Venerate

Soul

Black hole

Satanic

Beckon

Abomination

Black heart

Morbid

Defile

Flame

Flesh and bone

Sempiternal

Distill

Hail

No chance

Mortal

Immolate

Malignancy

Dark cloud

Honorable

Welter

Wrath

Final battle

Glooming

Run

Pestilence

Eternal fire

Willful

Sanctify

Gallow

No peace

Lustful

Eviscerate

Disbeliever

No future

Everlasting

Unchain

Witchery

Black soul

Impure

Ravage

Satanist

Final breath

Promethean

Mutilate

Lust

Black night

Most salient entities: many are drawn from the Sumerian and Nordic mythologies. I’ve also included in this bunch groups of animals (“Beasts”, “Locusts”).

Most salient locations. I’ve also included in this bunch non-descript places (“Northland”). Notice how most are concerned with the afterlife (surprisingly, “hell” is not one of them).

It occurred to me that these results could be the starting point of an automatic lyric generator (like the now defunct Scandinavian Black Metal Lyric Generator). Could be a fun project, if time allows (probably not).

The influence of JRR Tolkien in black metal is pervasive, almost since its beginning. One of BM’s most (in)famous outfits, Burzum, took its name from a word invented by the Middle-Earth creator that signifies “darkness” in the Black Speech of Mordor. Other Norwegian acts such as Gorgoroth or Isengard adopted their names from notable Middle-Earth locations. Perhaps the best example is the Austrian duo Summoning, who have incorporated in their releases inumerous lyrical references (well, not inumerous, about 70 actually) to Tolkien’s works.

The references to Middle-Earth mythology abound in both lyrics and band monikers. Using a list of notable characters’ names and geographic locations as the basis for a named entity recognition task, I set out to find which are the most cited in the black metal data set.

With this list and a small Java NER script implemented for this task, I found 149 bands which have chosen a Middle-Earth location or entity for their name. Angmar is the most popular (6), closely followed by Mordor (5) and Sauron (5). With 4 occurrences each, there’s also Orthanc, Moria, Nargothrond, Carcharoth, Gorthaur and Morgoth.

As for actual lyrical references to these entities, I found a grand total of 736 of them. The ones that have at least two occurrences are depicted in the bubble chart below. It’s not surprising at all to find that the most common references (Mordor, Morgoth, Sauron, Moria, Saruman and Carcharoth) belong to malevolent characters, or dark and dangerous places, of the Tolkienesque lore. The “Black Gate” is also mentioned a lot, but it could have a meaning outside of the Middle-Earth mythology.